Former Real exec joins Seattle-area VC firm

Jeff Schrock interviewed for venture capital jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area. But the 40-year-old former vice president of corporate development at RealNetworks found a better fit closer to home, linking arms with the upstart angel investment firm Monster Venture Partners.

Jeff Schrock

“I was somewhat disillusioned with that process,” said Schrock of his interviews in the Bay Area. “It is very hard to put a lot of money to work in the high-tech environment right now.”

Monster Venture Partners is taking a different approach than the big venture firms of Silicon Valley, investing personal funds and doing so in small increments of $300,000 to $1 million. That concept appealed to Schrock, an angel investor who believes there’s a “huge gap” between early-stage seed investments and traditional venture capital. He plans to invest some of his own money in those deals, focusing on digital media and consumer Internet projects.

Rob Monster, the former chief executive of Global Market Insite, certainly could use some help. Since launching the firm last year, Monster has invested about $6 million in 16 startup companies, including Alerts.com, Healthcare.com and Wishpot. He now sits on nine boards — a heavy load, but one that Monster believes is sustainable even as the firm looks to do another dozen or so investments this year.

Having Schrock on board will help ease some of the work load as they attempt to quickly take companies from a $1 million valuation to $3 million or more. Monster sees big opportunities in that arena of investing even as the economy starts to slow.

“This is a bit like 1848 Sutter’s Mill, there is just way too many attractive opportunities that are kind of north of an angel and south of an institutional VC,” he said.

Schrock was introduced to Monster late last year through Janis Machala of Paladin Partners, a high-tech matchmaker who had attempted to recruit the former RealNetworks and Yahoo executive to run new startups in town.

Rob Monster

Schrock, who served as chief executive of Activate.net from 1996 to 2001, said he didn’t want to do a startup again. Investing in startups, however, appealed to him as he looked to leave the corporate development world of RealNetworks.

“I really wanted to continue to be involved in a variety of businesses,” said Schrock, who assisted on acquisitions, joint ventures and content licensing at Real.

Working with Monster, Schrock said, there’s an ability to “divide and conquer” as they look at new opportunities. One partner can bounce ideas off the other, an important give-and-take as they do more deals.

“One of the things I have really enjoyed about working with Jeff is that he is not afraid to tell me what he thinks, and that’s a good thing, because I often have an opinion, sometimes a strong opinion,” said Monster.

Schrock, an early investor in Seattle-area startups such as PayScale, Transpera and LearnLive Technologies, said plenty of startup capital is flowing these days. But more important than money, he said, is “conviction” and experienced investors to help build compelling businesses.

Monster Venture Partners wants to take the lead in helping to streamline the investment process, creating a place where other angel investors can turn to find high-quality deals.

“There is an abundance of available capital,” said Monster. “And one of the things we have learned recently is that much of this deployable risk capital just doesn’t know who to go to for good ideas for investments that have been professionally vetted.”